Now it is September, and Change is on the Wind
by beesandbrews
Summary: It's the end of an era as Sherlock's life at Baker Street, and his days as a detective draw to a close. Summoned to Paris by Irene Adler, he can't resist one final stroll down the road not taken.


Every few years their paths cross. Sometimes they are allies, working together to foil a plot that offends even Irene's rather sketchy moral code. Other times they they are on opposite sides, matching wits without rancour. Inevitably, even if Sherlock has to engineer Irene's escape, when everything is done and dusted, they end up having sex.

John knows, of course, and he has given his blessing. He can afford to be indulgent, allowing Sherlock to explore a road that can never be truly taken because he is secure about his place in Sherlock's heart. Theirs is a relationship built on mutual trust and respect. What Sherlock shares with Irene is a complicated friendship and a compelling fascination that occasionally manifests itself in sex; they are lovers who will never be in love.

Whatever Irene's latest companion feels, it's irrelevant. Irene has a penchant for bright and pretty young things who have a talent for discretion and a need to be submissive. She keeps them firmly at arm's length, shedding them like summer clothes and shoes at the end of the season. Their banishment from Irene's life is never hurtful or personal and, despite the abrupt dismissal, they always look back fondly on their time in her service. Or so she assures Sherlock when he indulges his curiosity about the complexities of Irene's private life; she who has a new name to go with every new adventure.

It's been three years since their last reunion. Then it was May and the weather had been sultry and the air had been scented with exotic spices. Now it is September and change is on the wind as he ducks, shivering, onto a tree-lined mews and spots his destination. Their arranged meeting place is an out of the way Paris hotel that caters to the rich and powerful. The desk clerk assures Sherlock that the suite has every amenity as he is handed an old fashioned key and escorted to the bank of lifts. He wonders, as they ascend, just what lost property Irene has managed to acquire.

"Madame is waiting," whispers the porter as he offers to take Sherlock's bag.

He lets himself in quietly and is rewarded with an unguarded view of Irene before she has a chance to adopt a persona. Although she is still a beautiful woman, age is beginning to creep up on her. There are lines around her mouth that weren't there in Istanbul. A few more pounds have softened the sharp angles of her face and body, but her smile is no less mischievous and her eyes sparkle with the same anticipatory delight as Sherlock closes the door and the snick of the lock engaging alerts her to his presence. She sets down the champagne glass she's been toying with onto a tray containing an ornate sterling silver urn in which a bottle of Dom Perignon awaits, and approaches with her arms outstretched. Her flawlessly manicured nails are a pale shade of rose.

There's a ring on her right hand that's set with a large, oval-cut diamond. Sherlock frowns. He knows the ring. It's worth a king's ransom. It had gone missing in Monte Carlo two months earlier under curious circumstances. Details of the case slot into place and Irene's role in the affair becomes obvious. "Still up to your old tricks, I see." He shakes his head reprovingly but kisses Irene's knuckles in greeting.

Irene meets Sherlock's eyes and then she glances at the ring as if just noticing it for the first time. It's blatantly obvious she'd worn it to elicit exactly the reaction she'd received, and that she's engaging in a pantomime. "I like to misbehave, it keeps life from being dull." She looks down at the ring again, shifting her hand so the diamond catches the light. "Still, I'll admit it's a gaudy bauble, and not really my style. Perhaps you'll return it for me?" She slips it from her finger and offers it to Sherlock with a half cocked eyebrow.

"And the reward?" Sherlock asks, repressing a knowing smile as he drops the ring into his inside jacket pocket.

Irene shrugs. "I hadn't thought. Of course Nero's education fund can always use a top up."

Nero is not their son's given name, but it is the name that Sherlock knows him by; a sobriquet bestowed when he was a tyrannical infant that has stuck, even though he has shed his imperious ways and, according to his mother, grown into a thoughtful adolescent.

The pregnancy had been the result of a reckless night during his Moriarty induced exile and a secret that Irene had intended to keep to herself. But a misadventure had forced her hand, and once again she had turned to Sherlock to guard that which she valued as precious, and to explain to John why they were temporary custodians of a precocious dark-haired and pale-eyed toddler.

"How is the boy?" Sherlock asks. By mutual agreement, outside of the first, tense week of their introduction, he hasn't seen his son in person, although he contributes generously to his upkeep.

"He continues to thrive at Harrow," Irene replies. Pride colours her voice. "Although the chemistry tutor had to tick him off rather severely for experimenting without supervision."

Again, Sherlock tries to hide his smile. Not that he had much doubt, given the anecdotes Irene occasionally relates, but it seems the apple really isn't going to fall far from the tree. "Good. Is he still set on Cambridge?" Despite the trouble his own over curious nature caused him as a boy, he is glad to see the same sharp intellect manifest itself in his son.

"Wresting with a choice of college, but yes." Irene's expression softens. "I know we agreed that you'd wait until he was twenty-one before you introduced yourself properly, Sherlock – "

"He's your son, Irene," Sherlock says firmly before she can go further. Although John has argued absent parenting is a bad idea, both his reason and his gut tell him that it's best to stay the course they've mapped out. Irene has done a credible job keeping the various aspects of her life strictly segregated so that no taint of impropriety or danger cast their unwanted shadows over Nero. The boy has no idea that either of his parents are notorious, and that has given him a comparative sense of normality, despite his otherwise privileged upbringing. "Twenty-one will come soon enough."

Irene nods in resignation, knowing that there is no point in continue to press the matter. Unless there is a compelling reason to invoke their contingency plan, she shall continue to be Nero's only known parent. She goes to the champagne and lifts the bottle. "Can I tempt you?"

The champagne can wait. Sherlock takes the bottle out of Irene's hand and sets it back into the melting ice. "Always." Unwilling to waste what little time they have together, he needs to on the first train back to London in the morning, he sweeps her into his arms and carries her into the bedroom.

"The grey suits you." Irene reaches out and runs her fingertips through his still unruly curls as he crosses the suite. "It gives you gravitas."

'The grey' has become predominant in recent months. It is another sign that there are more days behind him than in front, and he finds the notion vaguely unsettling. "Thank you, although that's not the word I'd have used," Sherlock replies. Gravitas implies a certain staidness of character associated with the least appealing aspects of middle age. In his heart, Sherlock is still young and vital, something he is bent on proving to Irene.

He drops her gently down on the mattress and then sprawls next to her, looking up at the crystal chandelier. His stomach clenches, not unpleasantly, with anticipation, and he can feel his heart beat just a little faster. He takes Irene's hand and places his fingertips against her wrist. Her pulse is racing just as it did all those years ago in Baker Street.

"Darling Sherlock," she whispers against his mouth before pulling him into an embrace.

They take their time undressing, touching and kissing as each article of clothing is discarded. Sherlock carefully lifts Irene's dress – a flippant bit of emerald green silk haute couture that few women of her age could wear with aplomb but she manages effortlessly – over her head and drops it off the side of the bed. Irene frowns and a crease lines her forehead. Obediently, and with a smile, Sherlock gets up long enough to gather the dress, and his suit, and hang them both in the wardrobe before he joins Irene underneath the sheets.

Their lovemaking is just as unhurried, a contrast to their last meeting. Then, they'd had quick and dirty sex in an alleyway, pushing just enough clothing out of the way so that they could frantically couple before going their separate ways; their need driven by the knowledge that they'd barely escaped a dangerous situation by the skin of their teeth. It had been a frenzied encounter, one that had left them both wild-eyed and breathless, but there had been an unspoken promise, as they parted company, that the next time would be different.

Irene is a delicious sight, resplendent in bits of ivory silk and lace that had probably cost half as much as her frock. The expensive clothes haven't concealed a body that is past its prime, but instead has embraced its maturity. The softening Sherlock had noticed in her face has given her a curvaceousness that had been missing in her youth and makes her even more alluring. He runs his palm tentatively over the new contours of her hips, reacquainting himself with favourite places, before dipping down to kiss her belly and then moving lower to unsnap the fastenings of her suspenders.

"I've missed this." Irene sighs contentedly and arches up against Sherlock's fingertips as he traces the the outline of her mound through her knickers.

They savour one another's bodies. Sherlock can't help feeling, as he takes Irene's nipple between his lips and sucks gently, that their trysting time may be coming to a close. His life is about to change, and he has no idea what her future holds either. It makes him contemplative. Irene senses his distraction. She slaps his erection gently, bringing it to full attention, and then slowly sinks down on it until he is completely sheathed.

She rides him slowly, undulating her hips and contracting her inner muscles until Sherlock is completely enthralled. When she fall forward to grip his shoulders, he caresses the soft skin of her breasts and pinches her nipples the way she likes. Pain and pleasure intermixed; it's a metaphor for the complexity of their relationship, Sherlock realises just before orgasm overtakes him and he no longer has the desire to analyse anything as complex as his fascination with the woman lying next to him who's trying to catch her breath.

They take their time coming down, savouring the afterglow as much as they had their foreplay. By the time they get to it, the ice has melted and the champagne has gone slightly warm, but they toast each other with it anyway as Sherlock reclines against a stack of pillows and Irene snuggles against his chest.

"Is it true you're retiring?"

Sherlock hums an affirmative. "John has bought us a place in Sussex. Like my fore-bearers, I shall be a country squire, tending to my bees as John writes his next best-seller."

"No more Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street?" Irene muses. "It's the end of an era."

"Don't make it sound so portentous." Sherlock frowns as he tops up their glasses. "It's not the first time a man of my age has embarked on a new career." He sighs. "Frankly, Irene, for the last several years, I've found criminals boring." He contemplates his glass with a sense of loss as he remembers the thrill of excitement the prospect of a new case used to bring him. He wonders if part of ageing is seeing too much of life and becoming jaded, and that's why crime has lost its allure. "The bees will make a welcome change."

Irene touches her glass to his. "To change," she says before they drink.

Once again, Sherlock has the impression that they are toasting goodbye to more than his life at Baker Street. He takes Irene's glass away from her and kisses her softly, memorising the taste of champagne on her lips. He thinks of Nero and feels a pang of regret that Irene kept him a secret for as long as she did, wonders briefly if he would have done anything differently if he'd known about impending fatherhood, and decided that he wouldn't. A few stolen hours not withstanding, he has lived the life he was meant to live, solving unsolvable crimes with John at his side.

The warm champagne has done nothing to quench his thirst but much to exacerbate the post-sex malaise that, until recently, hasn't been much of an issue. Now he is tired and feels acutely a dozen small aches and pains he would have summarily dismissed a few years earlier.

"Sleepy?" Irene asks solicitously as he discreetly suppresses a yawn. She makes no mention of chemical helpers and Sherlock contemplates the idea that he's not the only one who's becoming more easily satiated. "Let's have a nap," she suggests. "Later, we can call room service and order dinner."

It's all a lie, of course. Irene will nap, for a little while, and then she'll slip out of Sherlock's embrace and disappear into the night. When they next meet it will be at some staid hotel like Claridge's. They will sip tea and make polite conversation over scones and cucumber sandwiches. Sherlock will ask Nero about his time at Cambridge and enquire about his career prospects. Irene will dote proudly on her men whilst John looks on from a distance, wondering nervously if he will be invited to the family reunion.

The stilted propriety of the imagined scenario compared to their usual liaisons makes Sherlock chuckle as he compares the mental pictures side by side. Irene glances over at him curiously. "Stay," he says softly, banishing the vision of reunions to come in favour of something entirely more pleasant. "At least until the morning." He takes Irene's hand and clasps it to strengthen his request before bringing it to his lips. She nods her acquiescence so he lets her free, slips from the bed, and locks the diamond ring in the laughably easy to crack safe.

Irene pouts at the implied lack of trust and Sherlock shrugs back. He is protecting her from her own, sometimes compulsive, need to cause mischief. Having accomplished her real mission of luring Sherlock to bed, there's no reason why Irene might not change her mind and take the ring back, Nero's education not withstanding. The pout becomes a self deprecating smile as she acknowledges his protectiveness. "Just this once," she replies with mock-severity, as if it's a rare treat she's bestowing in return.

Perhaps it is. Irene isn't much for goodbyes, preferring to steal quietly away when the opportunity presents itself. Sherlock climbs back under the sheets and takes her into his arms, kissing the top of her head as she spoons against his breastbone. For the moment they belong to no one but themselves, and everything is as it should be.


End file.
